5 Ways To Track What Your Website Visitors Are Doing

Your small business probably already has a website. (If not, what
are you waiting for?)

But do you know what is going on and how it's being used? If not,
you should.

The good news is that there are a lot of options for tracking
usage statistics on your site. They range in complexity and price
from free and simple, to complicated and very expensive.

Even if you have a very basic website, it is a good idea to have,
at minimum, one analytics tool set up, so you have some idea of
how many people are accessing your website, how they access it,
and what they are doing once they get there.

Installing analytics tools requires technical experience, so it
is a good idea to have your web designer or programmer handle
this (unless you would like to learn, which can be useful down
the road).

But the control panels to actually operate the tools are pretty
straightforward -- they are designed to be used by normal
businesspeople.

Here are five different tools you should be aware of:

1. Google
Analytics is the most popular free analytics
tool. You should probably have it installed on
your site, if you don't already. There is a learning curve, but
once you learn how to use it, you are all set.

After installing the code on your site, you will be able to see,
on a daily basis, how many visitors come to your website, how
many pages they load, which pages on your site are the most
popular, and what percent of your visitors are new versus
returning. You will be able to see which websites and which
search terms they are using on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

You will also get a wealth of information about your visitors in
aggregate, including which computer types they use, what percent
are accessing your site from iPhones or other mobile devices, and
in what part of the country or world they are.

And if you use either of Google's advertising products -- either
to place ads on Google, or to run ads on your website to make
money -- you will also be able to see statistics from those
programs within Google Analytics.

2. Chartbeat is a
newer, interesting analytics tool that works in
real-time.

Google Analytics is great for seeing what was happening on your
site yesterday or last month, but Chartbeat is all about right
now. You can see how many people are on your site at the current
time, what pages they are looking at, where they are coming from,
what they are saying about your site on social media, and more.

This could be helpful for rearranging your site in real-time if
something important happens. And it is also a cool way to see
what is buzzing right now. After a free trial, Chartbeat costs
about $10 per month to use.

3. Quantcast will
let you show your traffic stats publicly and will tell you
demographic information about your web visitors.

If you want to be able to share some of your website's visitor
information, you can get your site "Quantified," and Quantcast
will start showing off the stats it tracks about your site (for
free).

It will also be able to provide you with demographic information
about who is visiting your site, such as gender, age, race,
household income and education level, with an indication of how
that compares to the Internet average. You will also be able to
see similar websites that people use.

4. Mint is a
gorgeous, real-time stats tool with lots of plugins available to
add on new features.

The difference between Mint and these other tools is that Mint
needs to reside on your web server -- and needs to be installed
and updated. The other tools are hosted by other companies.

But like other options, Mint will show you how many visitors you
have, where they are coming from, and more, and with a very
simple, very attractive display. It also updates in real-time, so
you do not have to wait until tomorrow to see how today's site
activity is going.

Mint is $30 per web domain you are monitoring but does not have a
monthly fee.

5. Omniture is
the big daddy of analytics software and will do almost anything
you want, but it is very expensive.

If you have a very big website or need extremely specific
statistics, you may someday graduate to Omniture. It is not
practical for most small businesses because it is so expensive --
potentially tens of thousands of dollars per month, or more. But
it is important to know it is there when you need it.